Thursday legends - Skinner 10

by Quintin Jardine

  'Now, six months later, Shearer's battered to death, and Heard's firm stands to benefit to the tune of fuck alone knows how many millions. So just for a laugh, I asked Jack McGurk to check on all flights to Kuala Lumpur from Sunday and over the next couple of days, for a booking in Heard's name.

  'They all came back blank, except for Cathay Pacific; they had nothing for the period Jack asked about, but they volunteered the information that they flew a Mr L. Heard to KL last Tuesday - three days before we identified Howard Shearer's body, and even before that e-fit appeared in the press.'

  57

  'Damn me: Bob Skinner! Susan! It's Bob Skinner.' He heard a shout from somewhere in the background. 'Susan sends her love, to Sarah as well. What can I do for you? You got some bigwig guests who'd like to play Witches Hill? No problem, if that's it.'

  'No, it's nothing like that, Hector,' the DCC told the Marquis of Kinture. The policeman and the wheelchair-bound aristocrat had crossed paths a couple of years earlier, drawn together by crime, and a shared love of golf had cemented their friendship. 'Where the hell are you, by the way? You can never tell, when somebody's on a mobile.'

  'We're in the Florida Keys,' the Peer replied. 'Fancied a spot of sea-fishing; got to find other pursuits now that the House of Lords is being put out of business. I'm strapped in a chair with a bloody great rod in my hand even as I speak. D'you fish, old chap?'

  'Not me. Haven't got the patience. If I can't hit it, or kick it, then I don't want to play with it.'

  Lord Kinture laughed. 'Spend a few years in a chariot like mine. You'll do anything for sport then.'

  'Aye, I suppose so. Actually, I am off my feet at the moment; got a leg in plaster.'

  'Ah, too bad. What happened to it?'

  'It's a long story. Listen, to come to the point; we've got an investigation going on into the murder of an ex-copper named Alec Smith. One of my guys was up in Dundee this morning, interviewing a man who turned out to be your estate factor, and he discovered that Smith leased a cottage from you.'

  Even across three thousand miles of ocean, the silence was loaded. Even bounced off a satellite, Skinner could hear the sudden exhalation. 'So someone's done for Mr Alec Smith, have they? About bloody time too. Not in my cottage was it?'

  'No, in his own house.'

  'How was he killed?'

  'In an interesting variety of ways; he was tortured to death.'

  'Appropriate,' said Hector Kinture, with undisguised pleasure in his voice.

  'Hold on a minute,' Skinner exclaimed. 'If you hated Smith that much, why did you rent him one of your properties, and get involved in the deal personally?'

  'Because the bloody man blackmailed me. I met him a few years back, when I had the Queen and Prince Philip at Bracklands and he was involved in the security. Shortly afterwards, he came to see me and told me that he was looking for a property; a safe house, he called it. Said that he'd seen the empty place near Yellowcraigs, that he'd found out I owned it and wanted to rent it from me.

  'I told him to bugger off. The place had been promised to my head gardener at the big house as a retirement cottage; I was just about to start renovating it for him.' Kinture let out a half-cough, half-snort. 'The man, your ex-colleague, then produced a series of photographs of my brother-in-law. Don't want to say too much with Susan not far out of earshot; she doesn't know any of this.'

  'It's all right; don't even mention his name. I know who he is. These photographs; male or female?'

  'Male.'

  'So you rented the place to Smith.' 'No choice.'

  'You could have come to me. I could have squashed him like a fly.'

  'I didn't know you then,' Kinture pointed out. 'So I did what he asked. He used a false name on the agreement; I expected him to welch on the rent, but he didn't. It was always paid on the dot. I couldn't take the chance, Bob; had to protect Susan and her family.'

  'I understand that, man,' the policeman said. 'It's what you may have done to others in the process that's worrying me.'

  'God forbid that I have, but frankly, Bob, the man intimidated me. Look, what can I do to help you now?'

  'Simple. You can let my people enter that cottage without the need for a warrant. We think we have the keys.'

  'You've got it. Do you want Gilbert McCart to be there?'

  'Absolutely not.'

  'Fine ...' the Marquis hesitated. 'Bob; when you go in there, if you find anything, anything like ... You will be discreet, won't you?'

  Skinner let out a quiet, grim laugh. 'Don't worry, Hector,' he promised. 'In this one, discretion is the order of the day.'

  58

  'You mean you don't plan your own programmes?' Andy Martin asked, gazing at a computer monitor screen in a small, second-floor office in the Forth Street radio headquarters.

  'No way,' Spike Thomson replied with a dismissive grin. 'We have what we call music co-ordinators, two of them, who do all the programming for all the presenters. I'm one; although my show's on Forth AM now, I do all the programming for our FM station.'

  'Christ, how much of your day does that take up?'

  'Less than you think, Andy. We have our toys, you see. Watch.' He turned to the keyboard on his desk. 'We have software that does most of it for us. We load all of our play-list - that's all the music currently selected for airing - and the computer makes a random selection for each hour, with everything timed. Three tracks then a break, then another three and so on ...'

  He hit the Enter key and a programme schedule appeared on the screen.

  'My skill is in knowing where the computer's wrong. Some artists just don't fit together. Look there, for example,' he pointed at the monitor, 'We're not going to have two rap tracks on the trot.'

  'One on the trot's too much for me,' the detective chuckled.

  'Ah, but you're a red-neck polisman ... not that I disagree, mind you.' He pulled another title from the play list and

  substituted it for Puff Daddy. 'There're other things too,' he went on. 'The computer hasn't seen our research; it doesn't know that if you play three female artists in succession, your audience starts to switch off.' He saw Martin's surprise. 'Don't ask me why, but that is true. Doesn't matter who they are, either, and it doesn't work the other way around.'

  Thomson made a few more adjustments, then said, 'Fine. That's tomorrow's breakfast show done. I'll print it out now, and Madge, our production assistant, will put it on the presenter's desk.'

  He stood. 'Come on. We're on air in five minutes; we'd better get down to the studio.' He led the detective back down the stairs and past the entrance hall, to the basement nerve-centre of the building. As they walked, he explained the format of their on-air discussion. 'I'll play three music tracks at the top of the programme, past the news and traffic, go to commercials, then I'll introduce you.

  'We'll talk about police work in general; the overall role of the force; about five minutes of that then I'll play another three tracks, more commercials, then back to discussion of the role of the CID. No live cases - I'll make that point on air -just general. How a typical investigation runs.

  'Our discussion will split into three segments, and after about forty minutes, we'll be finished, and I'll cue you out.'

  'Fine,' said Martin. 'Do I have to keep my mouth shut in there, other than when I'm speaking?'

  'Hell no,' said Thomson. 'It's not like that any more. Nothing is as it was any more.' He stopped at a solid wooden door with a single small glass panel and punched in a code on a small keyboard.

  'You should change the code. Three, one, four, two.'

  The presenter looked at his guest, puzzled. 'How could you see? I had my hand over the panel.'

  'First four digits of the decimal form of pi. Most common office-security code in the business.'

  Spike gasped. 'Hey. I wonder if I can work that into the discussion?'

  It was Andy's turn to gasp as they stepped into the Radio Forth studio. He looked around for turntables and CD players, but saw none. 'Where
's the gear?' he asked, as his host waved farewell to the out-going presenter, and pulled a second chair up to the beechwood console in front of the yellow-covered microphone which hung from the ceiling. There was a production booth on the other side of a thick glass panel but it was empty. The full complement of the Drive-Time show was them, and a programme assistant. 'This is Audrey,' said Spike. Martin smiled at the woman across the console as he sat down.

  A jingle sounded from the big speakers, followed by a woman's voice. 'I'm Lesley Davis and this is Forth News.'

  The broadcaster pointed to a video-display screen, bigger than the computer screen in his office. It seemed to be an integral part of the console. 'That's it. All of it. This studio is state-of-the-art; everything's on digital audio tape now and the whole show, other than the live voices, are on that touch-sensitive screen.

  'No more cueing up vinyl. Now, I just do this.' His fingers flashed in a complex demonstration of the screen's functions. As Martin looked he saw that it was all there; the whole programme, set out in different sections, all of it timed to the second. He watched as the news-segment indicator counted down to zero.

  And in that instant the man beside him changed; the quiet, chatty figure turned into the broadcast version of Spike Thomson; right out there and in the listener's face. 'Hi and welcome to Drive-Time, on Forth AM. Three hours of the music, news, conversation and traffic that means the most to east Central Scotland.

  'A little later, I'll introduce today's special guest, the man in my hot-seat. But first ...' He touched a corner of the screen, and the sounds of Gloria Estefan's brass section rang out.

  He leaned back in his chair. 'That's us for nine minutes twenty, then ads. Relax. At least we can; I know of at least one FM station where they don't allow the presenters chairs. They like to keep them on their toes, literally. Seriously, though; you feeling comfortable?'

  Martin nodded. 'I'm fine,' he said. 'I'm just gob-smacked by all this stuff.'

  i love it,' said Spike. 'I'm real a tech-head. This is like Toy Town for me.' On the desk a phone flashed, without ringing; he picked it up and spoke to the caller for several minutes. 'Okay, if that's your advice,' he said at last, 'sell the Royal Bank shares and buy Barclays.'

  He hung up, with a quick glance at the screen. 'You saw the light as far as Rhian was concerned, I hear,' he murmured, casually.

  'Yeah,' said Martin. 'She made me see a lot of things; I owe her that.'

  'You're well shot of her, though. I didn't like to say at the time, but she's a man-eater. She tried for me, you know; I'm sleeping with her mother and she tried for me.'

  'She and her sister will have had a bet about it. That's how it was with me. I should have seen it but I was thinking with my dick at the time.'

  'Her sister?' Spike mused. 'Her big butch sister? You reckon?'

  'Yup. You still keen on Juliet?'

  'Oh sure. I've asked her to move in with me; she's thinking about it. Not the bloody parrot though,' he laughed. 'That stays.'

  He looked at Martin. 'Rhian'11 grow out of it one day,' he said. 'She's not a bad girl; just a bit screwed up over her father.'

  'What, about him running off you mean?'

  'That's what she told you. It's what Juliet told me too. 'S not true, though. Lesley Davis, the queen of our newsroom, spread the real story all around the office when she heard we were seeing each other; hell of a bloody gossip, Lesley, like all journos. She told the whole damn place that Juliet's husband committed suicide; it was hushed up at the time by the media, as these things often are.'

  He held up a hand as the light on top of the console shone red.

  'Okay!!!' Spike Thomson's alter ego reappeared like a genie from a bottle. 'Now, I promised you a special guest, and here he is ...'

  59

  '... so you're saying, Andy, that we should forget all the drama that we see in the movies and on the telly? You're saying that real detective work is boring?'

  Martin laughed easily. 'Not at all, Spike. CID is only boring to those who are bored by life itself. At the centre of a major criminal investigation lies a lot of hard work, gathering information, from scientific analysis of potential evidence found at crime scenes or, sometimes, revealed by post-mortem, to the picture of the event painted by witness statements and by wider canvassing through door-to-door interviews, or occasionally re-enactments to trigger the memories of people who might have seen something important without realising it.

  "The skilled detective will sit and look at all this and build what amounts to a virtual-reality model of the crime. From that he or she - and these days, more and more women are filling senior CID posts - will draw conclusions and follow any signs which may lead to the perpetrator.

  'Once everything has fallen into place, an arrest is made and we present a report to the Procurator Fiscal - whose agents we are under the Scots system - saying, "This is whodunit and this is our case against him."

  'The public think of the term "forensic science" in a very narrow sense. The skilled detective who looks analytically at all of the physical facts of an investigation, and determines what they say about truth or untruth, innocence or guilt – he or she is the true forensic scientist.'

  'So what you're saying is, if you wanna be a detective, you have to have a mix of analytical skills and patience.'

  'That's right. Although I mustn't miss out the magic ingredient.'

  Spike Thomson seemed caught off guard. 'What's that?' he asked. 'Luck.'

  'Nice one, Andy,' said Maggie Rose as she switched off the car radio. 'What he didn't say, though,' she murmured to her husband, in the passenger seat beside her, 'is that to get to the very top, you need to be a bloody good communicator as well - just like him.'

  She swung their car off the Dirleton by-pass as she spoke, entering the village from the eastward side, then made another quick right turn, following the sign which read, 'Yellowcraigs 1' and showed a caravan symbol.

  'Don't tell me that Alec Smith's safe house is in the middle of a bloody caravan site,' Mario exclaimed.

  'I doubt it,' Maggie replied. 'There's a lot of land down there - a hell of a lot. Some of it's public but most of it's landed estate. The Kinture holding is relatively small, isolated between the sea and Eilbottle Forest.'

  She drove along the narrow twisting road, until she came to a large parking area with only a few cars dotted about. As she turned into the entrance, an elderly attendant approached, only to back off at the sight of her police warrant card. She drew up as close as she could to the gate which led to Yellowcraigs beach, switched off and reached into the back seat for her briefcase.

  'I've got a map of the area,' she said. 'Have you got the keys?'

  'Of course. I'm a true forensic scientist; I wouldn't overlook something like that.'

  She smiled. 'Don't take the piss out of the Head of CID; he might hear you.'

  'I wouldn't be surprised. Tell you, Mags, I'll never underrate that man again.' He paused, as they walked down the widening path to the beach. 'Which reminds me. What did you think of this morning's sensation?'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Ah, of course; you didn't go to the Divisional Heads' meeting this morning. Karen Neville's gone: resigned the force.'

  'Why?'

  'Because she and Andy are getting married. She's moved in with him already.'

  'Bloody hell! I'd heard stories about them, but I never imagined ... I mean, we all know Andy but ... Och, good luck to them both. They deserve it. Still... wow.'

  'Aye, last week a sergeant; next month, our next Chief Constable's wife.'

  'What? Andy? To succeed Proud Jimmy? Rather than ...'

  'Put money on it.'

  'Time will tell. Here, do you think there's a message for us in Karen leaving the force?'

  'When you're Head of CID and I'm a Divisional Commander - or the other way around - maybe, but not right now. The Boss has kept us a distance apart on purpose, from the very start.'

  'Yet here we are on
the same job,' she pointed out.

  'On a very special job.'

  'Very Special Branch, you mean.'

  They stopped as the path which they were walking ran down to a curved golden beach. The island of Fidra lay only a few hundred yards offshore, a green hill rising steeply from the sea and surmounted by a white lighthouse. 'Picture postcard stuff,' said Mario. 'Where do we go from here?'

  She pointed to her left. 'Eastwards, into that opening in the whins, as far as I can see. This is shown on the map as a Right of Way, until it hits the Kinture land, then it skirts round it. Come on.' She led the way forward along the narrow pathway, cut by ground-care workers through high, prickly gorse bushes; at once the seascape was obscured from their view, but they could still hear the slow, languorous sound of waves splashing on the shore.

  They walked on for ten minutes, with the bushes thinning out gradually, and the tidal sounds becoming fainter. At last, the gorse to the north disappeared altogether, the path curved and was bounded by a waist-high fence made up of three strands of barbed wire. The land on the other side was forest, mature trees, with dark, threatening shadow beneath. Maggie stopped and looked at her map. 'A bit to go yet,' she murmured. 'We should see it soon.'

  They carried on until at last they came to a small wicket gate in the fence. Beyond, a path ran through the wood to a clearing, where stood an old grey cottage. Mario put a hand on his wife's shoulder. 'If we get into that cottage and there's an old woman inside, chuck her in the oven and slam the door. I fancy a piece of gingerbread.'

  'Don't joke; we might find worse than that.'

  The gate opened easily; they stepped through and walked up the path towards the cottage. When they reached the front door Mario produced Alec Smith's keys from his pocket. He slid the Chubb into a keyhole, the newer of two, and turned it, once, twice, then used the McLaren key on the second, brass-faced, lock.